Mary Gordon
Shambhala Press, 160 pages
The renowned novelist Mary Gordon has done what few people can do: say something new about Thomas Merton.
She begins by announcing the paradox: A monk vowed to silence produced more words than most writers. Though Merton was dedicated to solitude as a Trappist hermit, nevertheless an international company of seekers, celebrities, writers and activists were drawn to him for guidance. Thus the paradox: solitude gives birth to community — a community that continues 40 years after his death. Silence brought forth the written word akin to a tsunami.
Gordon explores the paradox that is Merton, choosing selections from his writings that give insight into him not only as a monk, but as a writer. We learn that Merton was forever chafing under the strictures of his monastic life, especially the demands placed upon him by his superior to write for an audience that would be drawn to Catholic spirituality. What kind of writer would he be? That is a … [Read more...]

Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin
Brazos Press, 288 pages
Reviewed by David Ensign
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church offered its first advice to the church and the culture about gun violence in America in 1968, calling for control of the sale and possession of fire arms of all kinds. Some 50 years later, the church keeps speaking, but it cannot be heard above the cracks of gunfire and the wails of lamentation.
That sad state of affairs left me with slim hope that I would encounter anything new in the pages of yet another faith-based call to address the epidemic of gun violence that plagues the United States. What, I wondered, is left to say on the subject after the Jim Atwood’s work earlier this decade (“America and Its Guns” in 2012, and “Gundamentalism” in 2017), among other notable recent works on gun violence?
Thus I was surprised to find myself surprised as I read Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin’s “Beating Guns.” Claiborne and Martin do recite the … [Read more...]

Michael Mather
Eerdmans, 160 pages
It’s hard to imagine any pastor in their right mind closing down a basketball program that brings in 250 inner-city youth from 9 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday-Friday, but Mike Mather did.
Why? While patting himself on the back from the media coverage Mather received as a young associate pastor presiding over 250 “impoverished” souls, nine young men in a four-block radius around Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis died from violence in nine months. His church was “helping a few people beat the odds,” but not “changing the odds for everyone.” And he was determined to do the latter.
Later, as a solo pastor in South Bend, Indiana, on Pentecost Sunday, he read aloud Joel’s prophecy: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.” But after church a congregant called his bluff: “If what God said is true, why don’t we treat people like that? … At the food pantry, we ask people how poor they are rather than how rich they are. Peter is saying all people … [Read more...]

Arden F. Mahlberg and Craig L. Nessan
Cascade Books, 236 pages
Reviewed by John Wimberly
Airplane pilots are taught to ignore their “gut instincts.” Instead, for each and every problem that may occur while they are flying, they are trained to disregard their initial reactions and use well-defined protocols developed over decades. Why? Because, in the air, instincts may be fatally misleading while protocols walk pilots methodically through crises. In their book on boundaries, Arden Mahlberg and Craig Nessan argue that the same is true in ministry. Good decision-makers understand that decision-making is more about process than outcomes, even when the process involves intuition. Research reveals that our instincts advise us to “give more weight to events that we have experienced personally rather than those experienced by others” and “if a bad thing has not happened to us, we tend to make decisions as if it never will.”
Such are the revelatory insights offered in a book definitely … [Read more...]

Ashley Hales
IVP Books, 192 pages
Reviewed by KJ Ramsey
Hales offers a compelling invitation to live with purpose and meaning in the middle of the manicured lawns of the suburbs — not by pining after some amorphous ideal we wish we could achieve, but by attending to the reality that Jesus has already changed the world by offering us his presence. This month my husband and I relocated from the West to the gently curved, confusing streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, and after five years of finding my way by noticing the mountains to the west, I feel displaced. And though I have never lived in a suburb and have moved to yet another city, Hales’ book offered me grace to see my new surroundings as a place to find more than my own satisfaction. She writes, “I can never answer the needs of my neighborhood when I’m telling a story that has me at the center instead of us, and when home is a product of what I buy, and when worth is measured in square footage.”
Whether you find yourself … [Read more...]

Stephen R. Haynes
Eerdmans 213 pages
Stephen Haynes is the author of “Bonhoeffer for Armchair Theologians” and theologian-in-residence at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis. He is also a scholar-on-a-mission to correct the record about the famous Lutheran pastor-theologian who bravely resisted the Nazi regime. One might wonder why this is necessary. Isn’t Bonhoeffer well known for his courageous call to discipleship against all cheap grace? Unfortunately, the answer is much more complicated and Haynes points out why, in the age of Donald Trump, Bonhoeffer is being used for purposes he would never recognize much less approve. He describes how the evangelical world adopted Bonhoeffer with some appreciation for his courageous witness but not as much for his theology. After surveying Bonhoeffer in the Bush and Obama years, Haynes turns his attention to the current appropriation. He takes aim particularly at Eric Metaxas’ award-winning biography as a distortion of Bonhoeffer and a … [Read more...]